"N-nothing! Who was scared?!" Xiao Ling'er jerked her head away, biting hard on her crimson lower lip, not daring to cast even half a glance toward Chen Xuan. "I just... just caught the wind earlier, and now I'm terribly hot! Hurry up and tie it! You're so annoying!"
Meanwhile, from the very instant Xiao Ling'er broke out of his arms, Chen Xuan had already taken his performance to the limit!
He did not dare so much as glance that way again. He swiftly retreated three full steps, dropped heavily onto one knee on the broken paving stones with a thud, and kowtowed like a pestle pounding garlic, raising his bloodstained hands high as he begged forgiveness:
"Forgive me, Third Young Miss! This lowly servant deserves death! Ten thousand deaths would not atone for my crime!"
Chen Xuan bent his back all the way into the mud, his voice choked and hoarse, enough to break the heart of anyone who heard him. "The stone bridge was right before us. When I saw you falling from the saddle, Third Young Miss, if you'd struck a corner of the stone railing, if anything had happened to your precious self, even being sliced into a thousand pieces and dying a hundred times wouldn't have atoned for my crime! This worthless life of mine isn't worth the weeds beside the road, but you are a cloud in the heavens, Third Young Miss! There was only one thought in my head: even if I had to use my own flesh as a cushion, I couldn't let you lose so much as a scrap of skin! Please punish me, Third Young Miss!"
Those words were viciously calculated!
Chen Xuan knelt on the ground, his eyes red, but his mind was clear as a mirror. Seize the initiative! First, I'll raise the Third Young Miss to the heavens, then trample myself into the cesspit, and define every bit of that sweet advantage I took holding her waist and cradling her in my arms as a loyal, righteous act of "risking my life to cushion her fall"! Anyone who dares come after me over propriety between men and women now will be disregarding the Third Young Miss's life! I'll help myself to the moral high ground first!
Sure enough, the guards around them who had turned their backs nodded inwardly as they listened, the sidelong glances they cast at Chen Xuan filled with admiration. Even Xiao Ling'er, still straightening her clothes, fluttered her trembling lashes twice at the words "use my own flesh as a cushion," and an indescribably strange feeling rose in her heart.
Someone, however, refused to swallow it!
"A cushion?! I'll give you a cushion, you bastard!!"
An utterly furious roar exploded as the heir, Xiao Yuxuan, finally ran up with several wastrels. From far away, he had seen with his own eyes Chen Xuan holding the half-undressed Xiao Ling'er. Added to the pent-up fury from picking a fight with Chen Xuan two days earlier and failing to kill him, old grudges and fresh hatred now collided, twisting his entire fair, effeminate face into that of a vicious ghost!
He shoved aside the guard blocking his way, rushed up to Chen Xuan in a few quick strides, raised his brocade-booted right foot, and drove a vicious kick at Chen Xuan's shoulder!
Thud!
The Ming Jin blood and Qi within Chen Xuan instantly dissipated ninety percent of the force. Playing along perfectly, he gave a muffled grunt with the impact and tumbled twice across the broken stones in a miserable heap, squeezing out just the right trace of blood at the corner of his mouth.
"Lowly slave! You dog! Who gave you the nerve to touch my third sister?! Are you worthy?!"
Still unsatisfied, Xiao Yuxuan charged up and delivered another vicious kick to Chen Xuan's lower back, pointing at his nose as he unleashed a torrent of abuse. "She's the precious young lady of my Xiao family! Never mind you-even the noble young masters of Qingzhou City haven't touched a single finger of hers! Those filthy hands of yours shovel horse dung in the stables every day, and you dared put them around my third sister's waist?! You must be tired of living!"
"Spare my life, my lord! Please calm your anger!"
Chen Xuan curled up on the ground, both hands clamped over his head, spitting bloody froth as he begged pitifully. "I truly feared the Third Young Miss would fall into the lake and come to harm! Then there wouldn't even be anyone to look after Treading Snow... I know I was wrong! I'll smash these filthy hands to pulp with a rock right now to beg the Third Young Miss's forgiveness!"
"Smash them? How could that be enough?! I'll chop those dog paws off at the wrists and feed them to the dogs today!"
Murderous intent surged in Xiao Yuxuan's eyes. He shoved aside the guard beside him, reached out, and drew the guard's hundred-times-refined steel saber with a ringing scrape, raising it high to hack down at Chen Xuan's arms!
"Big Brother, what are you doing?!" Xiao Ling'er's expression changed, and she instinctively took half a step forward.
But before she could shout another sentence, a voice as cool as ice and snow on lofty mountains drifted calmly from behind the crowd:
"Enough. Do you intend to slaughter the man who just saved the Third Young Miss's life in front of an entire courtyard of servants, my lord?"
The steel saber Xiao Yuxuan held aloft abruptly froze.
He turned to see his wife, Su Wanqing, walking slowly to the stone bridge, her hand resting on her maid Jinshu's.
She wore a simple, elegant moon-white gown, her waterfall of raven-black hair pinned up with nothing but a mutton-fat white jade hairpin. Her cool, exquisite face bore not a trace of worldly vulgarity, her beauty that of a banished immortal who had stepped out of an ink painting.
Yet at this moment, the gaze this banished immortal directed at Xiao Yuxuan was as cold as a thin, unsheathed blade.
Rebuked in public by the woman he most wanted to please, Xiao Yuxuan's face flushed liver-purple. Clinging to his dignity as the heir, he stiffened his neck and roared, "Wanqing! This lowly slave used saving someone as a pretext to take liberties with Ling'er and sully our marquis household's good name! These are the rules of my Xiao family's inner courtyard! Women should hold their tongues!"
"The marquis household's rules?"
Su Wanqing did not spare him another glance. She walked straight to the still-panting Treading Snow and, heedless of the mud on the ground, crouched gracefully. Extending slender, jade-like fingers, she gently lifted Treading Snow's still-bleeding right forehoof.
She gently pinched inside a crevice in the soft flesh along the inner edge of the horseshoe, then drew out a jet-black bamboo thorn slightly thicker than an embroidery needle and only half an inch long!
Besides the dark red horse blood, the thorn's tip also bore an eerie, dark green medicinal sheen.
Gasp-!
Guard instructor Zhang Kui and the others around him all sucked in a cold breath when they saw the bamboo thorn!
Su Wanqing stood, accepted the silk handkerchief her maid Jinshu offered, and wiped her fingertips. She held the poisoned bamboo thorn before Xiao Yuxuan, her moon-white sleeve slipping slightly to reveal a wrist whiter than frost and snow.
"Before you draw your blade to cut people down and enforce your rules, my lord, you might first open your eyes and look at this."
Su Wanqing's voice remained as calm as water, yet each word rang like thunder across the training grounds. "This substance is called 'itching ant grass.' It grows in the damp, shaded regions of the Southern Border. When its juice is smeared on a bamboo thorn and driven into a horse's hoof, there are no symptoms at first. Once the horse runs and its blood and Qi surge, within half an incense stick's time, an agonizing itch will bore into its heart, driving it into a frenzy. Yet the drug's potency is just short of killing the spirited horse on the spot."
She paused, her cool, clear phoenix eyes slowly sweeping over every face present, and her red lips parted slightly:
"Whoever went to such lengths to employ this method wasn't targeting a horse at all-they calculated that the Third Young Miss would come riding today between three and five in the afternoon, and wanted to stage an 'accidental fatal fall from a horse' within the marquis's estate!"